Testing Out ATI Kernel Mode-Setting On Ubuntu

[suokko]

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Everyone has Shiretoko, right?

[energyman]

I am pretty much unimpressed right now. But maybe its the video quality.
First video - nothing happens, you have a black screen, than X. How is that different from the way it is currently done? And oh boy, I hate splash screens so much...

The second one has me even more puzzled - I mean, switching to a vt is fine. But how is that exactly great news?
I mean, to demnstrate that KMS works in a way is nice - but what do I get from it in the future?

[AdamW]

The article is very Ubuntu-specific but doesn't really make that clear...

So, yeah, Fedora is the place to be if you want to be playing with KMS.

Kernel modesetting is default for ATI chips up to R500 (Radeon X1xxx) on Fedora 10 and 11. You can enable it for R600 and R700 chips with the kernel parameter drm.modeset=1 (though it's still experimental for these chips).

Kernel modesetting is not default for NVIDIA chips in Fedora 11, but it is available: you can try it with the kernel parameter nouveau.modeset=1 .

The video doesn't look that impressive because Ubuntu isn't really doing anything with kernel modesetting. On Fedora, kernel modesetting is used to keep the monitor in the same mode all the way from initrd load through to X load, so you get no mode switches (no black screens and sync noises).

[Culex]

Which versions of what with which patches and what other requirements are necessary to test out kms on R600/R700 hardware?

[AdamW]

Which versions of what with which patches and what other requirements are necessary to test out kms on R600/R700 hardware?

In Fedora, you don't need anything outside of the repos, just set that kernel parameter. For Ubuntu, I'm not sure, sorry.

[project_phelius]

Uggh! These instructions are utterly hideous,
but that was probably intentional to keep unqualified people (like me from using it. Just download the Fedora 11 RC livecd to play with KMS and DRI2 and burn it to a rewritable dvd and preserve your sanity and xorg config.

It was cool to play with on my r430 for all of 2 minutes that I ran glxgears and got to see the flicker-free boot and my monitor finally didn't sound like it was being s0d0mized when I did a VT switch (which was instantaneous, nice). It crashed and/or corrupted when I tried to do anything useful with it like watch a movie or play a game or do compiz or composite.

Not sure how much early adopter info is needed really, the developers seem to have more than enough apps, to flex opengl, xv, plus
performance regressions and crashes don't take any effort to produce. There really isn't anything to see yet.

But more test data can only help, so far be it from me to discourage anyone from giving it a go...

Appreciate all the effort these radeon guys are doing for the linux community!

Peace out!

[Culex]

In Fedora, you don't need anything outside of the repos, just set that kernel parameter. For Ubuntu, I'm not sure, sorry.

Thankies AdamW, project_phelius, I'll probably try the Fedora 11 livecd and then find out what's needed to do the same on Karmic Koala.

project_phelius: Do you think that the R600/R700 support would end up being just as crashy as the R430 you tried out? How was 2D support in the driver?

[Yfrwlf]

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Everyone has Shiretoko, right?

You read my mind. May see Flash become extremely rare for videos within the next year. Yay for open standards and real competition!